Never Forgetting the Past
by Lightning-Dono
Summary: Harry tells Ron about his past living with the Dursleys, starting from when he was 2 years of age.
1. One Innocent Question

Lightning-Dono - Read...

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He was striding down the desolate corridors one day, surveying the tiled floor that was cleaner than ever, due to the many house elves who had put much work into tidying up the school. His eyes were downcast and hair more ruffled than ever. Beneath the veil of hair that shrouded his forehead was a lightning-shaped scar that made it's way down to his eyebrow.

"Harry!" A red-headed boy ran up to him, his robes billowing out from around his legs as he ran. Harry slowed his pacing to allow his friend to catch up. "Harry!" He panted. "Why aren't you in class?"

Harry led the way towards the Gryffindor common room. No one, not even Ron, could make him tell what he had been doing, wandering in the halls like that. But as he continued to brood over the memories of his past, Ron decided to puncture the silent moment.

"So, what were you doing?" He asked, looking around quickly, as though expecting Professor Snape to pop out of no where.

"Thinking," Harry snapped, retreating to a comfy chair that was by the fire. Ron gave him an odd look and settled down into his designated chair, sighing very loudly until Harry gave in due to irritation.

"Look, I was thinking about my past with the Dursley's," he muttered, slumping forwards in his chair.

Ron drew himself up to full height (as full as he could sitting down) and let his Head Boy badge shine brilliantly. "That's no reason to be wandering the corridors during class," he said in a somewhat 'superior' voice.

"Then what were you doing in the halls?" Harry asked nastily, getting tired of talking to Ron and Hermione about every single thing in his life.

The boy shifted uncomfortably and stuck out his index finger. "Stupid Pig nearly beaked off my finger."

Harry nodded absent-mindedly and watched his friend nurse his finger carefully with a small strip of bandage.

"What makes you think about them for?" Ron inquired, concentrating very hard on his finger as though each wrong movement could be death-rendering.

"Well, it starts like this. I was thinking about summer, and then I thought about how the Dursley's treated me over the years, and it all adds up to this." Harry gave a careless shrug, relaxing his shoulders considerably and leaning back in the chair. Ron's eyes brightened, like this was best news in the world.

"Can you still remember things from when you were...say, two-years old?" He asked excitedly, leaning towards Harry. Harry nodded, flattening his hair nervously.

"I have a good memory, I guess," he admitted without much interest, hoping that he didn't have to explain his whole history to Ron. He was worried enough about Professor McGonagall appearing out of no where through the portrait hole and condemning them to horrid detentions.

"Can you tell me some?" Ron was practically bouncing up and down in his seat. Harry thought it was unfair that Hermione wouldn't get the chance to hear them, but he didn't think she couldn't accept the fact that a Prefect was getting off of classes to have story time.

"Well, it all began..."

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Okay, well, I'll continue it!


	2. 2 Years Old

Lightning-Dono: I'm going to write 2 chapters at a time and post them up. They won't be very long. I'll only go from when he was 2 years old until he's 8. 9 chapters in all, basically.  
  
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The little boy wailed shrilly into his aunt's ear as she picked him up gingerly to drop him into a spare crib that was worn out from her actual son.   
  
"Shut up!" She said dangerously, throwing a tiny rag at the small figure in the crib.   
  
"Waaaah!" A two-year old Harry cried, waving his arms about and throwing off the plaid rag with sheer anger. He wanted his bottle, and he wanted it then. Not that he really had anything that he could proudly call a bottle. His aunt and uncle would take turns pouring formula or milk roughly into his mouth until he stopped screaming at them.   
  
"BE QUIET!" His uncle, Vernon, roared from downstairs. This vicious comment was followed by the crashing noise of dishes being knocked onto the ground. "Oh, Dudley," he grunted loudly, dropping his spoon with a clatter to accompany the last of the crashing sound.   
  
Harry's crying subsided for a brief moment, as the noise startled him. But when his ears stopped ringing, he started to open his mouth and let out a sorrowful wail that would've broken anyone's heart. Other than his aunt's.   
  
This aunt sighed. "Is it a diaper change?" She asked grumpily, checking his diaper carefully. Nothing. "It must be milk, then." Tired of slaving around of him, but not wanting to be accused of murder and letting him starve to death, she walked lightly down the stairs with a very noticeable curve to her back.   
  
"What is it now?" Her husband asked dismally, attempting to clumsily super glue the dishes together. Of course, he didn't succeed.   
  
"He wants milk," she replied simply, pouring some milk into an un-washed cup from a small carton. The Dursleys believed that even sharing a milk carton with their young nephew would result in sickness and bad luck. To prevent this from happening, they bought him his own carton, smaller than the other ones and hardly noticeable.   
  
"Not growing up very fast, is he?" Mr. Dursley spooned food into his son's mouth. "Dudley's only one and he's been eating food!" His wife went over and cooed over Dudley, who was busy consuming as much food as a young elephant. Harry screeched from upstairs, reminding Mrs. Dursley of her duty. She snatched the cup from the counter and gave the stairs a reproachful look, as though Harry were sitting right on them this moment.  
  
"Here you are," she told Harry stiffly. Harry opened his mouth gratefully. Aunt Petunia tipped the cup and milk spilled into his mouth, splattering on his nose and other various parts of his face.   
  
"There." She placed the cup on the stand beside her and seriously considered handing the boy over to the orphanage somehow. Harry made a strange sound and rested his arms, clutching the rag protectively and sucking on his thumb, comforted. His aunt gazed at the peaceful figure that was lying in the crib. To her surprise, she almost felt sorry for Harry.  
  
"No," she told herself, throwing her head up snobbishly. "I can't feel sorrt for him. He's the son of...my sister." The woman shuddered and walked back down the stairs towards her husband who was dipping his finger inside the baby food.  
  
"What are you doing?" She questioned, watching her husband stick the finger into his mouth.  
  
"Sorry," he apologized quickly. "Have to see whether it's fresh or not for our son!" 


	3. 3 Years Old

**Lightning-Dono**: Short chapters equal quick updates. xD  
  
Answers to the Reviews:  
  
**ERmonkey, Burner of Cookies **- Well, everyone likes story time. xD And from what I see of Ron, he's always quite eager to hear new things about Harry, so I supposed it would only be right for him to ask.  
  
**Mooncheese **- I haven't had any experience with current 2-year olds. I don't remember what my brother was like 4 years ago, so...Yes, it'll be like he's a tad bit slow. Besides, if he learned how to talk from his aunt and uncle, he'd probably say 'Shut up' all the time.   
  
**Tekvah Ariel **- Actually, Ron is one of my favorite characters. oO; But I don't make that obvious for some reason. Once again, I don't remember what it was like being 2-years old. And I don't feel like asking my parents. xD  
  
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It was a year later, but respect didn't come. Harry was isolated most of the time while the Dursleys went to do errands and other such business that they found was required for life. The bright side to this was that he had learned how to talk a bit, and such. But now they ignored him even more and their tempers rose with every word that he managed to get out of his mouth.  
  
"No more!" His Uncle Vernon said angrily one day, slamming his fist down on the table and causing his paperwork to float down onto the ground. Harry crawled away from the table, feeling intimidated. "Stop babbling to me! I don't like it!" He stammered, his face glowing a beet red.   
  
"Sorry," Harry managed to say. His uncle glared at the young boy's backside as he crawled away. Dudley blocked Harry's path with his huge, bulky body.   
  
"Haha," Dudley laughed. Harry, though a year older, still felt pressured by the fact that Dudley was much larger than him. And with that said, it also means that Dudley bullied Harry often, despite his age.   
  
"No!" Harry squeaked, attempting to get up on his skinny legs, wobbling from side to side. Dudley tried to stand up, but the stubby figures that he had for legs wouldn't allow him to. Standing up, Harry felt greater than Dudley, until Dudley worked himself into a fit of false crying that somehow could trick his parents to thinking that it was real.   
  
"He's being mean to me!" The boy sobbed dryly into the arms of his caring mother. Mrs. Dursley cast Harry a menacing look as she hurried her son to safety. 'Safety' meaning somewhere that Harry wouldn't find him, and if Harry did, Dudley would have a wooden bat ready to smash him with.   
  
The days passed by in a very monotonous length of time. Dudley slowly became spoiled (as if he weren't already) and Uncle Vernon found many more reasons to complain about Harry's existance.   
  
"That boy is nothing but trouble!" He would say out of the blue whenever Harry was practicing walking. Slowly Dudley learned how to walk, knocking everything off the shelves, but they never even bothered to mess with Dudley. To Harry, although he was young, it seemed as though the world were against him.   
  
"Can I have an ice cream?" Dudley pleaded one hot afternoon, looking close to tears. His father grunted a reply. "What, daddy?" He tugged at his father's sleeve insistantly.  
  
"Yes," he replied, searching through some envelopes.   
  
"Can I have one, too?" Harry asked hopefully, pulling his thumb out of his mouth. Uncle Vernon looked up from his work with a crazed look.  
  
"No!" He bellowed, as though this was all a very big deal. Dudley gave Harry a supercilious grin and waddled away with Uncle Vernon, looking pleased with himself. Harry sat down on the carpeted floor with a sigh and started to pick at a particular string that was coming loose off of his hand-me-down shirt that was a size too big for him. Tugging it with great satisfaction, he made his was into the living room, managing to snap it. The sound of a string snapping seemed to make Aunt Petunia very nervous.  
  
"Who's there?" She suddenly said tensely, as if she had just heard a gunshot.   
  
"Me," Harry replied bravely, dropping the piece of snapped string to the ground. His aunt was sitting there in a plush chair knitting something that looked a bit like a sweater, but for a large pig.   
  
His aunt raised her hand furiously. "Don't you EVER do that again!" She screeched at him, throwing aside the needle she had been using. Harry nodded quickly and rushed away.   
  
A few moments later, Dudley came back with a double-scoop ice cream from the best ice cream parlor in town.   
  
"All for little Dudders!" Uncle Vernon pronounced proudly. Harry scowled at his cousin maliciously and walked away, unbalanced for several seconds. From where he was sitting, he could see Dudley in the kitchen, dripping melted ice cream all over the recently washed floor. Aunt Petunia smiled warmly at him (Dudley) and Harry knew that if he had done that, he would've been stuck in the broom closet all day with Dudley sitting against it.   
  
"Mommy," Dudley moaned suddenly as the first scoop disappeared from his cone. "I finish." His mother looked up at her son's bulging figure with slight disgust, she abruptly changed her expression with a pleased one. "Yes," she said absently, continuing to knit on the brown sweater.   
  
"Petunia, dear?" Uncle Vernon called, thundering down the stairs with great speed, his eyes bulging from their sockets. No reply. He entered the living room and his wife screamed in horror. Harry hurried into the room to see what was going on. What he witnessed almost made him laugh out loud. Uncle Vernon was standing there, his face as red as a crimson rose with his hair a bleached white. "He did it!" The man accused instantly, jabbing a finger in Harry's direction with such force that Harry could feel a slight movement of air whenever he made a jab with his finger.   
  
"No," Harry said in a small voice, backing away from his uncle slowly. Uncle Vernon didn't find this a suitable answer.  
  
"Yes you did! Now admit it!" He shouted, his hair sticking out at a horrible angle, as though he had been trying to use hair gel to make it stand up completely. Harry, feeling intimidated, covered his face with his hands and let out an ear-piercing sob. Hearing this, Aunt Petunia rushed to the scene, pushing her husband out of the way. Uncle Vernon gave his wife a very perplexed look.  
  
"He's only a toddler!" She gasped, and to Harry's surprise, picked him up.   
  
"He ruined my hair!" Uncle Vernon shouted, the veins on his neck bulging considerably.  
  
"He didn't." Dudley managed to say, his words slurred together. Uncle Vernon rounded upon his son, pointing to his hair as though he were just about to go to a beauty contest.  
  
"THIS IS MY HAIR YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!"   
  
"I did." Dudley admitted.  
  
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Thanks for the reviews, guys! =D 


	4. 4 Years Old

**Lightning-Dono**: This is fun! =D Please review? I'm not begging you to, but I'm trying to make these chapters interesting for you all and I want feedback from my readers. Thanks for the first batch of reviews, though! It made me happy.   
  
Answers to the Review(s):  
  
**Tekvah Ariel **- Heh, thanks. Yes, Dudley is idiotic. That's why I put it there. I was kind of thinking more along the lines of him using this to taunt Harry, but you know...  
  


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A year later, things got even rougher, even though Uncle Vernon had already had his hair re-dyed to it's original color...Or, atleast, somewhat close to it. Apparently, when he went to get his hair dyed, it also affected his already bad temper. Not even he sounded very pleased with Dudley, which was a sign that things in the Dursley household weren't going to go very well.   
  
"Out!" He growled whenever Harry entered the room when he was working.   
  
"But-," Harry would start every time.  
  
"OUT!" He would shout back, shoving Harry from the room as though he was poison. Harry now spent most of his time sitting in a closet, thinking about his original parents, not that he could remember anything about them. Once in a while he would look up and a green light would flash before his eyes somehow, and whenever this happened, he felt that there was a connection.   
  
"So, Harry-," his cousin started from outside the closet door.  
  
"Quiet," Harry replied with a mature ring to his voice that he liked to hear. It made him feel like he had much more authority. He could hear Dudley blowing a raspberry at him from outside. Harry had the urge to pull open the closet door and start acting tough.  
  
'Tough?' He had thought to himself, his hopes falling as rapidly as his confidence. 'I'm not tough' he realized, suddenly feeling very along in this world.   
  
Loud noised punctured his thoughts.  
  
"Quiet," he repeated, listening to his voice echo in the closet.  
  
"Make me," Dudley retorted; a little bit too boldly, Harry thought. In the past year, he discovered that he could do very strange things with his anger, so he chose not to control it. He enjoyed the time that he had made a stick zoom up and smack Dudley square on the nose, and didn't want to risk losing this fascinating ability. Of course, doing these things led him to a harsh punishment of no meals and other of the sort, yet he didn't want to stop.  
  
"'Member what happened las' time you says that?" Harry asked, laughing quietly. His grammar was slowly improving.  
  
"No." Dudley's voice wavered slightly.   
  
"The stick."   
  
There was a strange sound from outside and then the sound of footsteps.  
  
"HARRY IS TALK ABOUT THE STICK!" He yelled indignantly. Harry felt an unknown jolt of fear. Why should he be afraid of any more dire punishments. The reason why he was crouching in a closet and twidling his thumbs was because he had hit Dudley in the back with a broom. There was no reason to get punished more because of something that happened months before.  
  
Then again, the Dursleys liked to torment Harry by taking past situations and bringing them up against him.  
  
"HARRY!" Uncle Vernon yelled, drawing out the 'a' sound in Harry's name; a warning that he had done something wrong. Harry remained silent. As far as he was concerned, if he didn't say anything, they won't bother him. But, things didn't come that easily.   
  
"Speak to me, boy!"   
  
He sat there in the dark closet, staring at the door he couldn't even see due to lack of light. That was when the closet door was thrust open by his uncle, who was absolutely steaming.  
  
"Don't EVER talk about that again! Do you hear me!?" Spittle flew everywhere as he exploded over Harry, who sat there quietly, absorbing all of this. "Are you deaf, boy!?"  
  
"No."   
  
"Don't EVER talk about it again!"   
  
Harry was quite tired of hearing this repeated statement.   
  
"'Kay." Harry clung onto his other arm very tightly, bracing himself for a smack. But it never came. Uncle Vernon continued to breath repeatedly into his face.  
  
"You'd better not. You'd better not..." He walked away, throwing the door back into place.  
  
That night, Harry crawled back into the confined space that he had for a room. The broom closet downstairs. Aunt Petunia didn't provide him any forms of comfort other than a ragged teddy bear that Dudley had mistreated through the years.  
  
"Wake up early tomorrow," she had snapped at him for no reason, shutting the closet door behind her. She had gotten Harry into an unpleasant routine of waking up at around five o'clock in the morning to do clean-up around the house like a janitor.   
  
Harry gave the cobweb hanging above his head a small nod. Hugging the bear with much passion (although he despised of anything that had been in Dudley's hands before), he fell into a restless sleep.   
  
He had a dream about a green flashing light, for the millionth time, but he didn't understand what it could've been. All he knew was that it was a brief flash of green light and a faint sound that sounded peculiarly like laughter following. Yet something about it all seemed familiar, as though it had some relation to his past.  
  
Waking up with a start, he realized that he was slightly off schedule. The clock read something that looked like a blurry six. Aunt Petunia had decided to get him on an early start for education, fighting against her husband's constant grunts of dissaproval.  
  
"It's never too late to get a start in this world," she had said every time. "And besides, if he's uneducated, he might grow into the moron his parents had." The shut Uncle Vernon up.   
  
"The prince has finally awakened?" Aunt Petunia was sweeping the floor with a broom, her long neck craning her head in another direction to allow her to look out the window at the other neighbors doing their dailies. Harry nodded.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Well, don't just stand there! Grab a dustpan!" She barked, her forehead dripping with sweat. Did it really take that much work to sweep the floor? Or was she just not accustomed to doing work? "Go on!"  
  
Harry hurried to the other side of the room, grabbed the dustpan, and gave it to his aunt.   
  
"No, no, put it by the pile of dust!"  
  
Harry obeyed, as he knew he always should. Aunt Petunia swept the dust into the dustpan with a huge whack, blowing dust into Harry's face and onto his clothes. She didn't seem to notice as she set the broom down noisily and clammored off to tend to errands. Brushing himself clumsily, he got up, sneezed, and headed into the front room, where he was greeted by a few rounds of yelling.  
  
"Dust! All over you! Get over here!" Uncle Vernon jerked him over by the arm and shook his hands around Harry to brush off the dust. Harry didn't resist, but he found this very uncomfortable as Uncle Vernon hovered his hands above his head and his hair fanned up, uncovering his scar. He had been told that when his parents had died in a car crash when he was one, something scraped him on the head and gave him the scar. As of then, Harry had been thoroughly convinced.   
  
But he had a strange feeling now that his scar was somehow tied to those awful, confusing dreams that he had been having. 


	5. Detention

Lightning-Dono: THANK YOU to everyone who reviewed. ((shifty eyes)) Of COURSE, I wouldn't mind if all of you readers would just simply click the lovely lavender/purple button at the end of this chapter and leave a comment or two. A review is an author's best friend. Kind of. n-n;  
  
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Ron abandoned rebandaging his finger and stared aghast at Harry, as though there was something highly intriguing on his friend's face.  
"Bloody hell!" He exclaimed in a very dramatic whisper. "Are you sure you haven't mixed up something? Surely they can't be that mean?" (A/N: Excuse the fact that he sounds a bit like Hermione. She IS one of my favorite characters.) Harry shrugged blandly and opened his mouth to continue his story. But Ron interrupted, "But you were only four!" Almost growling in frustration, Harry answered, "To them, it doesn't matter if you were four or eighty-four. All they want you to feel is pain." Ron settled back down and watched Harry expectantly, expecting him to burst. "Go on," he said, trying to look sophisticated and cool at the same time. It ended up making him look a bit like Malfoy, and more like a dork. "I don't think that's working for you," Harry joked, even though his heart was heavy. "What's not? I've got the posture; the position..." he squinted up at the ceiling. His already flaming red hair suddenly had a golden glint to it from the light that suddenly came through the window. "Now hurry up with thes story!" There was a brief silence as they heard strange grunting sounds from outside. "What do you suppose that is?" Harry asked tensely, rising from this seat. Ron let out a loud, fake laugh.  
"Probably one of those 'security' trolls. Lumbering around stupidly and grunting their heads off..." The portrait hole opened to reveal Professor McGonagall, who looked quite formidal at the moment with her hair wrapped tightly into a bun and maroon robes. "What might two Gryffindor students be doing skipping their classes?" She asked in a voice of restrained anger. "Exchanging stories, perhaps?"  
At this, Ron and Harry gave the other a look of pure horror. "W-We were just enjoying the fire," Ron stuttered pathetically. Harry raised his eyebrow. Professor McGonogall mimicked this very move. "Now, what shall I issue you two? Detention? Expulsion?" She pondered upon these two options in a mocking manner. "Certainly expulsion would be too severe for just skipping a class or two...You two will have detention starting after dinner tonight. And if you dare to skip those, also..." She shuddered. "May bad fortune be bestowed upon you." McGonagall whipped out her wand and in midair appeared some parchment, in which she quickly scribbled on and handed to both Harry and Ron. "Return your classes."  
  
In Potions, all seats were taken except two. Ron ended up sitting next to Neville, whose cauldron was emitting puffs of neon green smoke. Harry took the seat next to Seamus, who was stirring his thickening potion so hard that rock-hard bits of his potion splattered everywhere. Snape's lips curled into a smile as he made Seamus' potion vanish. Hermione, behind him, leaned forward to whisper in his ear.  
"Where were you two?" She inquired quietly, watching her steaming potion. "Missing Charms is not a good thing!" "I never said it was," Harry said shortly, squinting through the hazy room to read the instructions. They were supposed to be making a potion to destroy any bugs involved in the destruction of gardens. In an instant, Harry was sinking into a pleasant daydream of whipping one up to ruin Aunt Petunia's precious lawn. "Class is over," Snape said, barely moving his thin lips. He strutted over to Harry's cauldron and sneered at bottom. "I see...Nothing, again?" Harry's face grew hot.  
"No."  
"I see you won't become a top student any time soon." Harry almost ran out of Snape's classroom. Ron followed suit.  
"That Snape. Zero marks! And we walked in at the middle of class. He didn't even notice!" Ron was still fuming as they reached the Gryffindor table. Hermione was already sitting there, picking at her food gingerly. "What's up?" Harry asked Hermione, who looked very melancholy at the moment. "You have detention today, don't you?" She sighed, as though she didn't approve of 6th years getting in trouble.  
"How did you know?" Harry asked heatedly. It wasn't exactly what he had been planning to say, but it was kind of a curious thing that she somehow knew.  
"You dropped a piece of parchment on your way in to Potions and I read it. Here it is." She handed the detention note over to him. "I thought that if you guys had the evening free we'd pay Hagrid a visit. He's been acting kind of upset lately. I can't figure out what's wrong with him." "Yeah, well, that's kind of your problem," Harry replied. He wasn't in a good mood after practically re-living his horrid past. Hermione looked slightly shocked for a few seconds, but calmed back down. "All right. I'll just go by myself." Harry regretted even opening his mouth because when he had just started dinner, Hermione got up and hurried towards the bathrooms. His only hope was that she didn't get tangled into something with trolls again. 


End file.
